School of Names

The “School of Names” (ming jia) is the
traditional Chinese label for a diverse group of Warring States
(479–221 B.C.E.) thinkers who shared an interest in language,
disputation, and metaphysics. They were notorious for logic-chopping,
purportedly idle conceptual puzzles, and paradoxes such as
“Today go to Yue but arrive yesterday” and “A white
horse is not a horse.” Because reflection on language in ancient
China centered on “names” (ming, words) and their
relation to “stuff” (shi, objects, events,
situations), 2nd-century B.C.E. Han dynasty archivists dubbed these
thinkers the “School of Names,” one of six recognized
philosophical movements. The “school” is a taxonomical
fiction, however. The varied figures assigned to it—Deng Xi, Yin
Wen, Hui Shi, and Gongsun Long, among others—never formed a
distinct circle or movement devoted to any particular doctrine or way
of life, and their intellectual interests overlapped extensively with
those of the later Mohists,
Zhuangzi,
and Xunzi. Several of these men were active
politically: Hui Shi was a government minister, Yin Wen and Gongsun
Long political advisors and peace activists. Still, in the eyes of Han
historians, they devoted themselves to no signature ethical or
political doctrines. Hence they became known primarily for their
interest in language and disputation and on that basis were deemed a
“school.”

Before the Han dynasty, the social group of which these thinkers were
a part was known as the bian
zhe—“disputers” or
“dialecticians”—because they spent much of their
time in “disputation” (bian, also
“discrimination” or “distinction drawing”), a
form of dialectical persuasion and inquiry aimed fundamentally at
“distinguishing” the proper semantic relations between
names and the things or kinds of things to which they
refer. “Disputers” is thus probably a more appropriate
English label for Hui Shi, Gongsun Long, and the others than is the
“School of Names,” though it refers not specifically to
these figures but to the broader class of scholars to which they
belonged. (“Name-distinguishers” or
“distinction-disputers” would be even more accurate,
though these terms are too clumsy to adopt as English equivalents.)
The disputers flourished for about a century and a half as wandering
political advisors, counseling rulers throughout pre-unification
China. They disappeared with the onset of the Qin dynasty (221 B.C.E.),
partly because the political and intellectual climate of the new
empire was hostile to their purely theoretical, occasionally flippant
inquiries, and partly because with unification their political
services became obsolete.

For help with pronunciation of the Chinese names and terms used
in this article, see the supplementary document:
Pronunciation Guide.

Han dynasty archivists associated seven figures with the “School
of Names”: Deng Xi, Yin Wen, Hui Shi, Gongsun Long, Cheng-gong
Sheng, Huang Gong, and Mao Gong (Han History 30,
“Bibliographical Treatise”). To these we can add one
further figure, Huan Tuan, whom China's earliest history of
thought, “Under Heaven,” Book 33 of the Zhuangzi,
pairs with Gongsun Long. About the last four of these men virtually
nothing is
known.[1]
About the first four, we know more, but not much. There is little
first-hand evidence about what they thought, since nearly none of the
writings attributed to them by Han bibliographers survive. With the
exception of a few brief texts attributed to Gongsun Long, everything
we know comes from quotations or anecdotes in other texts, including
the Zhuangzi, Xunzi, Annals of Lü Buwei, Hanfeizi, and
several Han dynasty anthologies. These second-hand accounts
typically date from long after the lifetime of the figures they
describe, and they may be embellished or dramatized, warped to fit their
writers' agenda, or even fictional.

Contemporary studies sometimes treat these disputers together with
the
later Mohists.
Topics associated with them are addressed in Mohist texts, and
“Under Heaven” depicts sects of Mohists engaged in
“disputes about the hard and white and the same and
different,” two central themes of the disputers. The later
Mohists probably respected the individuals identified with the School
of Names but were critical of them. Numerous passages in the Mohist
Dialectics appear to be either rebuttals of their ideas or
defenses of Mohist doctrines against their arguments. On the other
hand, insofar as ‘the School of Names’ is simply a label
for early thinkers interested in language and dialectics, the later
Mohists themselves largely fit under this label.

Hui Shi, Gongsun Long, and the others have been described as Chinese
“sophists,” and there are indeed superficial similarities
between them and the Greek sophists, at least as the two groups were
characterized by their respective enemies. Their social role and the
subject matter of their inquiries were generally quite
different.[2]
But both were interested in language and philosophical issues
inspired by reflection on language. Both taught rhetoric and argued
lawsuits. Both were attacked for arguing purely to win, for being
willing to argue either side of any issue, and for propounding
paradoxes, all without regard for the facts. Their inquiries led a few
thinkers in each tradition toward relativism. At least some members of
both groups were itinerant, the Greeks moving from place to place
giving public exhibitions and offering instruction, the Chinese
typically seeking to win the ear of rulers and influence political
policy.

The disputers' focal activity appears to have been a form of
public debate or persuasion called “disputation” or
“distinction drawing” (bian), which often took
place in the court of a regional lord or a state
sovereign. Disputation appears to have been rooted partly in the
practice of litigation, partly in the rhetoric used by court advisors
in the “explanations” (shuo, also
“persuasions”) through which they tried to influence
political policy. Primarily a type of analogical argumentation,
disputation, like much legal rhetoric, often took the form of citing a
precedent, analogy, or model (fa, also “law”) and
explaining why the case at hand should be treated similarly or
not.[3]

Disputation could be pursued for a variety of ends, some extolled by
ancient writers, some condemned. Constructively, it could be a means
of clarifying and defending the right way (dao). Through it,
one could lead others to distinguish shi/fei (this/not-this,
right/wrong) correctly and thus obtain knowledge. Of disputation in
this sense, Xunzi says that “the gentleman must engage in
disputation” and The Annals of Lü Buwei remarks
that in the course of study, one must occasionally engage in
“disputation and persuasion” (bian shuo) in order
to expound the Way
(dao).[4]
This would also be the sense in
which Mencius
explains that he has no choice but to engage in disputation, since as
a follower of the sages he must attempt to rectify people's
hearts and refute the pernicious sayings of Yang Zhu
and Mo Di (Mencius,
3B:9).[5]

But disputation could also degenerate into a superficial game of
trying to outtalk the opponent, an idle contest of wits aimed at
defending sophistries, or even a simple quarrel. This side of
disputation explains Mencius's chagrined response when told he has a
reputation for being “fond of disputation” (3B:9). Early
texts are uniformly disparaging about such empty or flippant
disputation. The Annals of Lü Buwei complains that
“Those in the world who study engage in much disputation. Their
sayings are facile and expressions are upside-down. They don't seek
the facts (shi, the actual things, what is real). They
strive to demolish each other, with victory as their [sole]
purpose” (15.8/368). “Under Heaven” says that
disputers “exaggerate others’ hearts and change
others' intentions. They can defeat others' mouths, but
cannot persuade their hearts.” As to Hui Shi, “He took
opposing others as the substance of his activity and desired to make a
name for himself by defeating others; that's why he couldn't get along
with people” (cf. Graham 1981: 284–85). Sima Qian, the Han
historian who may have coined the label “School of Names,”
says in his account of the six schools that the disputers
“determine things only by names and neglect people's
feelings.” They twist words so “people cannot get back to
the thought” they were trying to express (Shi Ji, Book
130). Practitioners of this sort of antagonistic or frivolous
disputation cared only for victory, even at the cost of distorting the
opponent's point, and they defended bizarre claims without regard for the
facts.

For further discussion of disputation in the context of early Chinese
philosophy, see the supplementary document.

The next section will briefly explore the general themes that early
texts associate with the disputers. We will then look more closely at
the doctrines of the four known figures the Han History
assigns to the School of Names.

Early texts regularly associate the disputers with four
themes. “The same and different” (tong yi) and
“hard and white” (jian bai) are mentioned almost
invariably. “Deeming so the not-so, admissible the
inadmissible” (ran bu ran, ke bu ke) and “the
dimensionless” (wu hou) appear slightly less often. A
good example is this excerpt from “Autumn Waters,” Book 17
of the Daoist anthology Zhuangzi, in which Gongsun Long
himself is depicted mentioning three of these themes:

When young, I studied the way of the former kings. When I grew up, I
understood the practice of benevolence and righteousness. I united the same and
different, separated hard from white, made so the not-so and
admissible the inadmissible. I confounded the wits of the hundred
schools and exhausted the eloquence of countless speakers. I took
myself to have reached the ultimate. (cf. Graham 1981: 154)

What are “uniting the same and different,”
“separating hard from white,” and “making so the
not-so and admissible the inadmissible”? Given the limited
evidence, we cannot be completely sure what these phrases—along
with “the dimensionless”—allude to. But most likely
they denote types of sophisms or paradoxes, not specific
statements or
doctrines.[6]
And early texts, especially the
Mohist Dialectics, do give us enough information to make
reasonable conjectures about the general issues they involve. (See
the entry on the
Mohist Canons.)

As we saw above, “same” (tong) and
“different” (yi) are central concepts in ancient
Chinese theories of language, knowledge, and disputation, as
represented by the Mohists and Xunzi. According to the Mohists,
“sameness” can refer to at least four types of relations:
identity; part-whole relations; being distinct but inseparable
features of the same object, such as the hardness and whiteness of a
white stone; and kind relations, or being part of the extension of the
same term. This last variety of “sameness” is probably
most important for our purposes here. General terms, or names for
“kinds” (lei), are regarded as denoting all
things or stuff (shi) that is “the same” in some
respect, such as all horses or all oxen. Speakers can use language to
communicate because they are familiar with the kinds of similar things
that words refer to, and thus upon hearing a word know what the thing
referred to “is like.” The relations of “same”
and “different” determine what counts as correct matching
of names and stuff and thus what knowledge is. Disputation is
fundamentally a process of debating whether the thing in question is
“this” (shi) or “not-this”
(fei), the same as or different from some model, paradigm, or
analogy. The issue of how to distinguish “same” from
“different” is thus pivotal to Chinese philosophy of
language, epistemology, and disputation.

Some references to the disputers' interest in “the same
and different,” then, may allude to legitimate, if widely
misunderstood, inquiries into the foundations of language and
knowledge. Gongsun Long's “uniting the same and
different,” on the other hand, probably refers to manipulating
standards for distinguishing kinds in order to produce sophisms. The
disputer could cite features of different kinds of things by which
they could be treated as similar or features of things of the same
kind by which they could be treated as different. (This strategy is
suggested by the fifth thesis of Hui Shi, to be discussed below.) Such
shifting of similarity criteria is illustrated by many of the
disputers' sophisms. Among other examples, Hui Shi's
“The sky is as low as earth, mountains are level with
marshes” deems different things similar; some of the arguments
for Gongsun Long's “A white horse is not a horse” treat
things of the same kind—horses and white horses—as
different, playing largely on the ambiguity between “same”
in the sense of being of the same kind and “same” in the
sense of identity.

Manipulating the same and the different alters the distinctions that
ground our use of words and thus our standards of knowledge. (In the
most extreme case, uniting everything into a “Great One”
would leave us unable to communicate linguistically and eliminate all
conceptual or propositional knowledge.) The notion that we can realign
the boundaries of the same and different without limit signals a
radical skepticism about the existence of natural kinds. Indeed, it
threatens to leave us without any knowledge at all, since the
standards by which to judge whether one knows something are never
fixed. It also provides an approach to winning any disputation:
instead of seeking objective criteria that fix the correct
distinctions between things, the disputer just redraws the
distinctions between things or kinds in whatever way he needs to
establish his claim.

In later Mohist thought, “hard-white” or “as hard to
white” (jian bai) is a technical term for the relation
between two things or two features of a thing that are inseparable and
“mutually pervasive”—that is, they completely
coincide throughout the same spatial
location.[7]
The paradigm of such features is the hardness and whiteness of a
completely white stone. Another example is the length and breadth of
an object (B4). Features that are “as hard to white”
“fill” or “pervade” each other (B15). Thus
they are in a sense “two,” but unlike a pair of shoes, one
cannot be taken away from the other (B4). The relation of “as
hard to white” contrasts with that between two measured lengths,
which cannot everywhere overlap without merging to form only a single
length, instead of the original two, and with that between any two
mutually exclusive features, such as being an ox and being a horse. No
single object can be both an ox and a horse, but an object can be both
hard and white.

“Separating hard and white,” then, is treating mutually
pervasive features as if they were separable or detachable, like two
spatially distinct objects or two removable physical parts of a
whole. (As Graham points out (2003: 173), in contexts where
“hard and white” is mentioned alone, with no reference to
“separating” the two, the phrase is probably just a
metaphor for logic-chopping or hair-splitting debate in general.) A
plausible example of “separating hard and white” is
Gongsun Long's treating the color of a white horse as a thing
separable from the shape, as when the text reads, “The white is
not the horse. A white horse is a horse together with white”
(“White Horse Discourse”).

“So” (ran) is frequently used to indicate that a
predicate is true of a thing. It can also mean “the case”
or “how things are.” According to Mohist Canon A71,
something is “so” when its features are similar to a model
for a certain kind of thing. “Admissible” (ke)
refers to statements that are semantically or logically
“possible”—that is, free of logical or pragmatic
contradiction. In contexts concerning action, “admissible”
refers to what is permissible by moral, social, prudential, or other
standards. So “making so the not-so, admissible the
inadmissible” refers to collapsing or reversing conventional
distinctions governing language use, judgment, morality, and
courtesy. The practical upshot is roughly the same as that of
“uniting same and different,” but the latter refers to
kind relations between objects, “making so the not-so” to
speech and action. “Making admissible the inadmissible”
was the trademark of Deng Xi, the earliest figure associated with the
School of Names, who became famous for his doctrine of “both
sides admissible” (liang ke).

Preventing the “not-so” from being treated as
“so” is precisely the point of “correcting
names”:

If names are correct, order obtains; if names are misplaced,
disorder. What cause names to be misplaced are dissolute explanations
(shuo, also “persuasions” or
“arguments”). If explanations are dissolute, then the
inadmissible is deemed admissible and the not-so so, the not-right is
deemed right and not-wrong wrong. (The Annals of Lü
Buwei, 16.8/400)

Collapsing the distinction between so and not-so, admissible and
inadmissible is a prominent topic in the famous “Discourse on
Equalizing Things,” Book 2 of
the Zhuangzi.
Though generally critical of the disputers (among whom its author may
nevertheless once have numbered), the text agrees that such
distinctions can be collapsed or reversed, depending on what standards
of judgment we choose to adopt. It is thus firmly opposed to the
orthodoxy, represented by Analects (see the entry on
the Confucius),
the Mohists,
Xunzi,
and Lü Buwei, that clear, fixed public standards must be set for
the use of names, since without them, patterns of use will vary and
social chaos is likely to ensue. The Zhuangzi suggests that
disorder does not invariably follow from “linguistic
liberalism,” and indeed that fixed standards are unattainable
and unnecessary for communication anyway.

The fourth theme, the dimensionless (wu hou, literally
“lacking thickness”), is more obscure, mentioned only once
in the Xunzi and once in the Annals of Lü
Buwei. The dimensionless probably refers to a geometric
point. According to the Mohists, the dimensionless does not
“fill” anything (A65). A starting point (duan) is
the dimensionless tip of a solid object (A61). Allusions to the
disputers sometimes contrast the dimensionless with “the
dimensioned” (you hou, “having thickness”),
which the Mohists explain as having something it is bigger than
(A55). The dimensionless is probably associated with the disputers
because of Hui Shi's paradox that “The dimensionless cannot be
accumulated, yet its size is a thousand miles.” (Points cannot
be accumulated, yet a great girth or length is the sum of the points
that constitute it.) In passages referring to the disputers and their
sophistries, “the dimensionless” probably alludes to any
paradox arising from the concept of a geometric point or an
infinitesimal.

Deng Xi (d. 501 B.C.E.) was China's earliest renowned lawyer and
rhetorician. He has been called the “founding father of the
Chinese logical tradition” (Harbsmeier 1998: 286), though this
is probably an overstatement, since we lack evidence that he undertook
any explicit study of argumentation or that he influenced the theories
of the Mohists or Xunzi. As Harbsmeier (287) rightly points out,
however, Deng Xi epitomizes the roots of Chinese disputation in legal
rhetoric. He establishes a link between disputation and litigation
that continues throughout the classical period. Indeed, his reputation
as a legal and political gadfly may have contributed to later
authoritarian thinkers' attitude that litigators disrupt social
order and should be banned.

All of our very limited information about Deng Xi is second-hand,
comprising a one-line entry in the Zuo Commentary, curt
attacks on him in the Xunzi, three anecdotes in The
Annals of Lü Buwei, and a few stories in texts of later
date.[8]
According to the Han History, he was the author of two
scrolls (pian) of writings, neither of which survives. The
Zuo Commentary (Duke Ding, Year 9), the earliest and most
reliable of our sources, reports that he composed a penal code on
bamboo strips, perhaps drawn up as an alternative to the official code
of his home state of Zheng. By the time of the Han dynasty, however,
the code had been lost.

Xunzi alludes to Deng Xi's thought in three places, each time pairing
him with
Hui Shi,
though the men were from different states and lived about 200 years
apart. This incongruity suggests that the pair are being used
iconically to represent a certain general intellectual style or
orientation. Thus the sophistries Xunzi ascribes to them may not be
their invention, or at least not Deng Xi's. Xunzi describes them
as “fond of dealing with strange doctrines and playing with
bizarre expressions” (6.6), of which he gives these examples
(3.1):

Mountains and abysses are level.

Heaven and earth are
alongside each other.

Qi [on the east coast] and Qin [in the far west] are
adjacent.

Enter through the ear.

Exit through the mouth.

Hooks have whiskers.

Eggs have feathers.

The first two of these are similar to paradoxes attributed to Hui Shi
in “Under Heaven” (Zhuangzi, Book 33); we will
discuss them in the section
on Hui Shi.
The seventh is also listed in “Under Heaven,” but not
attributed to Hui Shi there. This suggests that the list of paradoxes
associated with him was still fluid at the time of Xunzi's
writing. The third is similar to the spatial paradoxes of Hui Shi,
also to be discussed below. The sixth is obscure; some commentators
emend “hooks” to a similar graph for “old
women.” The fourth and fifth are puzzling, since they are not
obviously paradoxes or sophisms. Commentators often combine them into
a single sentence, but in the text all seven seem to be independent,
three-word sentences.

Xunzi's fundamental complaint about Hui Shi and Deng Xi is that
their “frivolous investigations” do not conform to
traditional ritual propriety and righteousness (3.1), an unsurprising
criticism given the Confucian's commitment to ritual
training—and thus conventional standards for the correct use of
names—along with his general disdain for science and
intellectual curiosity (12.3). They are “incisive” and
“clever,” but their ideas are “useless,” yield
few concrete results, and have no application to government
(6.6). They have “no regard for the facts about right and wrong,
so and not-so” (8.3). In the eyes of a 3rd-century
B.C.E. Confucian traditionalist, then, the 6th-century Deng Xi was
emblematic of a bright, talented person who wastes his energy on
pointless intellectual games and sophistry, perhaps with a deliberate
disregard for the truth, instead of earnestly committing himself to
moral training and political administration.

For an account of Deng Xi's legal and political career, see this
supplementary document:

Little is known of Yin Wen (fl. late 4th century B.C.E.), and it is
unclear why the Han History classifies him with the
“School of Names.” Perhaps the one scroll of writings by
him mentioned in the “Bibliographical Treatise” was about
language. What little information we have about him comes mainly from
two sources, the “Under Heaven” essay and The Annals
of Lü Buwei, both of which are considerably later than his
lifetime and thus must be taken mainly to be reporting legend. Neither
text attributes to him views on language or disputation. “Under
Heaven” links him to Song Xing, his teacher or colleague, and
the pair were among the many scholars who gathered at Jixia in Qi
under the patronage of King Xuan (r. 319–301
B.C.E.).[9]
Xunzi rebuts several of Song Xing's doctrines at length but does not
mention Yin Wen.

“Under Heaven” portrays Yin Wen and Song Xing as tireless
crusaders devoted to saving the world by advocating non-aggression, a
life of few, easily satisfied desires, and a tolerant, unbiased frame
of mind. To promote these doctrines, they “traveled the world,
persuading the high and instructing the low.” In relations with
others, to save people from fighting they taught that “to be
insulted is no disgrace,” and to save the world from war, they
taught “forbid aggression and put troops to rest.” (As the
name suggests, the Warring States era was marked by frequent,
catastrophic wars.) Concerning the self, they held that the inherent
desires are few and shallow, a doctrine that, if true, would remove
many potential reasons for conflict. “Their starting point in
dealing with things was avoiding enclosures,” or psychological
barriers due to prejudice or dogmatic commitment which tend to result
in biased or one-sided judgments. Such “enclosures” are
frequently also a source of conflict, since they may prevent one from
appreciating all relevant features of a situation or understanding
others' point of view. Yin Wen and Song Xing emphasized that the
heart itself has a kind of “conduct,” independent of
external conduct. In their anti-war stance and emphasis on benefit,
they display affinities with Mohist thought: “If something was
of no advantage to the world, understanding it was not as good as
abandoning it.” But the doctrines of tolerance and avoiding bias
are genuinely novel, and are probably the reason Song Xing is singled
out for praise in the Zhuangzi (Book 1).

The Annals of Lü Buwei depicts Yin Wen in an audience
with King Min of Qi (r. 300–284 B.C.E.), defending the doctrine that to
be insulted is not disgraceful. (Again, we should keep in mind that
the details of the story may be mostly later invention.) The anecdote
vividly illustrates several of the main techniques by which the
disputers conducted their craft. Yin Wen identifies distinguishing
features for calling things by a certain name and employs models and
analogies to persuade the king. The context of the passage is a
discussion of “correcting names.” Because he failed to
correct his own use of names, King Min knew enough to be fond of
“officers” but not how to distinguish the sort of people
properly referred to as “officers.” (Shi,
“officer,” was a social rank similar to
“knight,” but by this era it had lost most of its martial
connotation.) Yin Wen proposes that “officers” are
distinguished by four types of conduct: they are filial in serving
their parents, loyal in serving their ruler, trustworthy toward
friends, and brotherly toward neighbors. The king agrees, indicating
also that this is just the sort of person he would appoint as a
government official. Yin Wen asks whether the king would still appoint
such a person supposing that, on being insulted in public, he did not
fight. The king replies that to be insulted is a disgrace; he would
not appoint a disgraced person.

Yin Wen said: “Though when insulted he does not fight, he has
not strayed from the four types of conduct. Not straying from the four
types of conduct, this is not losing that by which he is an
officer. If, not losing that by which he is an officer, in the one
case the King would appoint him an official, in the other case not,
then is what we earlier called an ‘officer’ indeed an
‘officer’?”

The King had no response.

Yin Wen said, “Suppose there is a man here, when governing his
state, if people do wrong he condemns them, if people do no wrong he
condemns them; if people commit a crime he punishes them, if people
commit no crime he punishes them. Then would it be admissible for him
to despise the people for being hard to govern?”

The King said, “Not admissible.”

Yin Wen said, “…The King's command says: ‘One who
kills another dies, one who injures another is maimed.’ The
people, fearing the King's command, dare not fight even when deeply
insulted; this is fulfilling the King's command. Yet the King says,
‘Not daring to fight when insulted, this is a disgrace.’
Now to call it a disgrace, it's this that's called ‘condemning
it’. In the one case to appoint a person as an official, in the
other not, this is deeming it a crime. This is the King punishing
someone when he has committed no crime.”

The King had no response. (16.8/402)

King Min is presented as an example of someone whose use of names,
such as ‘officer’, is incorrect: name and form do not
“fit.” As a result, “those he calls worthy are
unworthy, what he calls good is depraved, and what he calls admissible
is perverse.” Interestingly, the text employs terminology that
dovetails with later Mohist semantic theory and epistemology. It
explains that the King did not know the “reason” or
“basis” for deeming people “officers,” using
the same term as the Mohists—gu—and alludes to
his poor ability to classify or “sort” (lun)
things into kinds, which in later Mohist epistemology is the mark of
understanding. Though the Annals story does not make this point
explicitly, we can link the King's erroneous
“sorting” to Yin Wen's doctrine of “avoiding
enclosures.” The King's judgments about officers are
“enclosed” by his dogmatic conviction that to be insulted
is a disgrace and that an officer must answer challenges to his honor
with violence.

Hui Shi (fl. 313 B.C.E.) is a complex figure, familiar and indistinct by
turns. He is mentioned in at least eight early texts. Only two, the
Xunzi and the Zhuangzi “Under Heaven”
essay, give any information about his philosophical views, and they
merely attribute a series of theses to him without recording his
arguments. For a review of biographical information about him,
see the supplementary document.

We have no direct evidence of Hui Shi's views on language and
meaning. But as Graham points out (1989: 81), a story preserved in a
Han dynasty text suggests that he may have held a view similar to that
of the Mohists (Canon B70) (see the entries on
Mohism and the
Mohist Canons).
Language enables us to communicate by indicating that
the objects referred to are similar to things we already know, the
kinds of objects conventionally denoted by those words.

A client said to the King of Liang, “In talking about things,
Hui Shi is fond of using analogies. If you don't let him use
analogies, he won't be able to speak.” The King said,
“Agreed.” The next day he saw Hui Shi and said, “I
wish that when you speak about things, you speak directly, without
using analogies.” Hui Shi said, “Suppose there's a man
here who doesn't know what a dan is. If he says, ‘What
are the features of a dan like?’ and we answer, saying,
‘The features of a dan are like a dan,’
then would that communicate it?” The King said, “It would
not.” “Then if we instead answered, ‘The features of
a dan are like a bow, but with a bamboo string,’ then
would he know?” The King said, “It can be known.”
Hui Shi said, “Explanations are inherently a matter of using
what a person knows to communicate what he doesn't know, thereby
causing him to know it. Now if you say, ‘No analogies,’
that's inadmissible.” The King said, “Good!”
(Shuo Yuan, Ch. 11; cf. Graham 1989: 81)

As we would expect from mainstream Chinese theories of language and
disputation, Hui Shi is accustomed to explaining things by appeal to
analogies. Indeed, his answer to the king is itself an analogy, or at
least an illustrative example (the Chinese word for
“analogy,” pi, refers to both). We can also
notice from the story that in seeking to learn about something
unknown, one does not ask for a definition of the object, but
for a description of what its features “are like.” The
standard response is to cite a familiar analogue and then point out
the differences between the unknown object and the familiar
one. Communication proceeds not by knowing “meanings,” but
by knowing how to distinguish similar from different kinds of
things.[10]

“Under Heaven” is overwhelmingly critical of Hui Shi:

Hui Shi daily applied his wits in disputation with the others, but
only in comparison with the disputers of the world was he exceptional,
that's the bottom of it.…Weak in virtue, strong on external
things, his path was crooked. Viewed from the perspective of the Way
(dao) of Heaven and Earth, Hui Shi's abilities were like the
labors of a mosquito or gnat. Even with respect to external things,
what use were they? (cf. Graham 1981: 285)

The text concludes that he wasted his talents “chasing after the
myriad things,” in his many directions of inquiry, instead of
concentrating on a single path. As a result, he only “ended with
a name for being good at disputation.” This dismissal is less an
objective evaluation of Hui Shi's inquiries than an expression of the
intellectual orientation of the essay's Han dynasty author, who values
only moral cultivation and commitment to an ethical and political
dao (way), not inquiry for inquiry's sake. It seems
likely that we would have considered Hui Shi's explanations of
“the myriad things” to be of great interest.

Our only detailed information about Hui Shi's doctrines comes from two
sources: the seven statements attributed jointly to him
and Deng Xi
in the Xunzi (3.1), which we looked at briefly above, and
the “Under Heaven” essay, which attributes ten theses to
him, some paradoxical. “Under Heaven” was probably written
long after Hui Shi's death, and only one of its ten theses appears in
the much earlier Xunzi list. Hence we cannot be sure the ten
theses were indeed Hui Shi's; some or all may have been the work of
anonymous followers who adopted him as their figurehead. Fortunately,
this historical issue is irrelevant to their philosophical
interest. Either way, the theses are intriguing ideas formulated by
one or more Chinese thinkers probably sometime during the late 4th or
the 3rd century B.C.E. The arguments for the theses have been lost, and
as a result some are extremely obscure. But others are reasonably
clear or at least open to educated conjecture.

The ten theses revolve around the theme that distinctions are not
inherently fixed, but relative to a perspective, and thus can be
redrawn or collapsed as we like simply by shifting
perspectives. Several of the paradoxes focus on negating commonsense
distinctions, in particular spatial and temporal ones, partly by
appeal to the relativity of comparisons and partly by appeal to
indexicals (Hansen 1992: 262). (A high mountain is not high when seen
from space; if I walk southward, a spot that is south of me now will
in seconds be north of me.) The fifth thesis, on “the
same” and “different,” seems to provide a key to
several, perhaps all of the others. It indicates that on some scale or
another, anything can be deemed “the same” or
“different.”

The theses are presented in “Under Heaven” as follows:

Hui Shi had many directions (fang, also
“methods”). His books filled five carts; his dao
(way) was contrary; his sayings did not hit the mark. Intending to
tabulate things, he said:

The ultimately great has no outside, call it the Great One. The
ultimately small has no inside, call it the Small One.

The dimensionless cannot be accumulated, its size is a thousand
miles.

Heaven is as low as earth, mountains are level with marshes.

Just as the sun is at noon, it is declining. Just as things are
alive, they are dying.

The same on a large scale but different from what is the same on a
small scale, this is called “same and different on a small
scale.” The myriad things all being the same or all being
different, this is called “same and different on a large
scale.”

The south has no limit yet has a limit.

Today go to Yue but arrive yesterday.

Linked rings can be disconnected.

I know the center of the world. It is north of Yan [the
northernmost state] and south of Yue [the southernmost].

Universally care for the myriad things. Heaven and earth are one
body.

Hui Shi took these to be of great significance. He displayed them to
the world to let the disputers know of them, and the disputers of the
world enjoyed them with him.

It is unclear whether the order of the sequence is deliberate, but
this seems unlikely, since the temporal paradoxes are not placed
together, and it is hard to see how thesis 8, about the rings, fits
into a deliberate, argumentative sequence. On the other hand, the last
thesis, the only one with ethical import, reads like a grand
conclusion and so probably belongs in the final position. The first
forms a natural opening, with the “Great One” portending
the “one body” of the tenth, and the second may about one
of the notions introduced in the first, the “Small One” or
infinitesimal. The fifth is among the clearest and is probably the
basis for several of the others. Some scholars have suggested that the
list breaks into two parts, with the fifth thesis summarizing the
first half, but this interpretation seems forced. The first, fifth,
and tenth are of course neither paradoxes nor sophistries, but
relatively straightforward philosophical theses. Thesis 3 is a variant
of the first two paradoxes attributed to Hui Shi and Deng Xi in
Xunzi (3.1), listed above in the section
on Deng Xi.
With those two exceptions, the paradoxes attributed to Hui Shi here
are considerably more interesting philosophically than those Xunzi
mentions.

The theses are obscure enough that, especially without knowing Hui
Shi's original arguments, any close interpretation is
speculative. Different readers are bound to arrive at different
conclusions. With the possible exception of theses 1, 5, and 10, there
is simply not enough contextual information to offer an authoritative
argument for any interpretation, though at least some readings can be
ruled out for failing to cohere with any recognized issues or theories
in early Chinese philosophical discourse. Here we will offer a
tentative explanation of each thesis grounded in the philosophical
context sketched in
“Background and Overview”
above.[11]
The theses divide fairly naturally into four groups, which we will
discuss one by one.

Group 1: Basic Principles

The first group comprises theses 1, 5, and 10, which state
philosophical doctrines about ontology and ethics, not paradoxes, and
which are relatively easy to understand. All three deal with the plurality
of possible ways to distinguish things, either as “the
same” or “different” or as parts of a whole, ranging
from the smallest possible part—the infinitesimal—to the
largest possible whole, the “Great One,” which includes
everything in the cosmos. How we distinguish things is relative to the
scale or perspective we adopt. Thesis 5 is slightly obscure, but it
seems to describe the relative or perspectival nature of relations of
similarity and difference. Two things can be the same on a large
scale, or in some general respect, while at the same time being
different on a smaller scale, or in some more specific respect. For
example, two animals can be the same in being of the kind
horse, yet be different in color. Anything can be similar or
different on some scale or other. If we distinguish finely, every
individual horse is different, and if we distinguish coarsely, horses
are no different from other animals, or even from all other
things. There seems to be an unlimited range of levels on which we can
distinguish relations of sameness and difference, including deeming
every individual different or the myriad kinds of things the
same.

Because the same/different relation comprises both kind relations and
part-whole relations, Thesis 5 can also be taken to include part-whole
relations. Deeming all things “the same” is deeming them
all parts of the same whole. Deeming them “different” can
be understood as separating them off as individual parts of that
whole. To the extent that the other theses are based on relations of
sameness versus difference and part versus whole, then, thesis 5 may
explain them all.

Thesis 1 is nearly self-explanatory. How we distinguish
things—in this case, how we even count “1”—is
relative to some standard of division. The thesis concerns summing and
dividing. The whole cosmos can be summed into a whole to form the
Great One. Or it can be divided down to the smallest possible unit,
the Small One, probably a geometric point.

Thesis 10 presents an ethical principle tied together with an
ontological one, which presumably is meant to justify it. Since
everything can be summed into a whole—the Great One—heaven
and earth and the myriad things contained therein can be considered a
single “body” or
“unit.”[12]
(In classical texts, the expression ‘heaven and earth’
refers to the cosmos, including not only the sky and earth but the
entire natural world.) The ethical principle follows intuitively. If
everything is one unit, then any care (ai, also
“love”) we have for ourselves should also be directed at
all of the other myriad things (wu, “things,” or,
perhaps more specifically, “creatures”), since
fundamentally we are all parts of the same vast “body.”
This ethical stance takes the ideal of impartiality even farther than
the Mohists. Their position is that we must care inclusively for every
person in the world. Thesis 10 advocates caring for every
thing as well.

Group 2: Infinitesimals and Part-whole

The second group concerns infinitesimals and part-whole
relations. Like all seven of the remaining theses, these are
paradoxes. Thesis 2 is fairly clear. Geometrical points are
dimensionless. The sum of two points is still a point; hence points
cannot be added one to another to form an object with thickness or
length. Yet anything with dimensions is somehow constituted by points
and divisible into
them.[13]

In this group we can also include thesis 8, though with much less
confidence, as it is the most obscure of the ten. We will tentatively
suppose—following Harbsmeier (1998: 296) and Graham (1989:
79)—that this thesis too is based on infinitesimals. The paradox
might then be explained in one of two ways. First, if the linked rings
are thought of as circles, formed by points on a plane, then they have
no thickness. They appear linked when viewed from above, but on the
surface of the plane nothing blocks them from being pulled apart. The
second explanation extends the same idea to three dimensions. If, as
thesis 2 suggests, two three-dimensional rings are constituted by
dimensionless points, then they can be pulled apart: since each point
takes up no space, there is nothing preventing the rings from passing
through each other. We should emphasize that these interpretations are
highly speculative and thus carry little or no justification. Without
further contextual information, even if this sort of explanation makes
sense of the paradox, we have no particular reason to believe it is
correct.

Group 3: Spatial Relations

The third group are based on spatial relations, including comparisons
of size. Thesis 3, the only one also attributed to Hui Shi in the
Xunzi, can be taken to illustrate the idea that things deemed
different on one scale can be deemed the same on another. By some
perspective or standard, such as that of the infinitely vast Great
One, the difference between the height of the sky and the earth or
mountains and marshes may be insignificant. From that perspective, the
differences between mountains and marshes may be only what thesis 5
calls “differences on a small scale,” while the two count
as “the same” on a large scale. Thesis 6 is especially
obscure. Thematically, we can point out that like several of the other
theses, it attempts to collapse a distinction, in this case between
the finite and infinite. As Hansen (1992: 262) points out, thesis 6,
along with 7 and 9, all focus on indexicals. Since the referents of
indexicals shift from context to context, they are a vivid example of
the fluidity of the language-world relation and the distinction
between “this” (shi) and “not”
(fei). This suggests at least two ways to understand the
thesis, both too speculative to be considered justified, but perhaps
at least roughly indicative of its point. One is that if a particular
direction is to be south, it must have a limit, or else the
four directions all merge into one and south is no longer south, since
it is not distinguished from the other three. Another possibility is
that since the directions of the compass are all indexical, relative
to our point of reference, south always has a limit: the point at
which we stand.

Thesis 9 is another of those involving indexicals, in this case
“center,” and is also very obscure. The thesis claims that
the center of the world is north of the northernmost state and south
of the southernmost. Possibly the thesis is a variant of thesis 3,
that the sky is as low as the earth. The point there was that from the
perspective of the infinitely vast whole, the difference between the
height of the sky and earth may be insignificant. Thesis 9 could be
making the analogous point that the distance between Yan and Yue is
insignificant. Another possibility is that if space is infinitely
large, then everywhere is the center (Graham 1989: 79, after the
3rd-century Sima Biao). Possibly this thesis is a variant of the same
idea as the third thesis in the Xunzi list, which was that
the far west and far east are “adjacent.”

Group 4: Temporal Relations

The fourth group deal with temporal relations. Thesis 4 is paradoxical
but easily intelligible. Just as, from one perspective, the sun is at
its highest, from another perspective, it is beginning to set. Just as
things are living and growing, they are also coming closer to
death. Again, the plurality of perspectives threatens to collapse the
distinction between two apparent opposites, living and dying. In
comparison with thesis 4, thesis 7 is extremely obscure. Clearly, it
attempts to collapse the difference between today and yesterday or
present and past. Interestingly, this paradox combines spatial and
temporal relations, since in addition to the distinction between today
and yesterday, there is the spatial movement from here to Yue (a state
in the south). Hence Harbsmeier (298) and Graham (79) both propose to
interpret the paradox in terms of the infinite divisibility of space
and time, suggesting that if I cross the border into Yue precisely at
the instant when today turns into tomorrow, the result is that I am
simultaneously leaving one state today and arriving in the other
tomorrow. Another possibility is to point out that xi, the
word rendered “yesterday,” is also commonly used to mean
simply “the past” or “previously.” So thesis 7
can be restated, “Today I go to Yue, but I arrive in the
past.” The import of the paradox could be that all
“arriving” is always in the past: whenever we arrive
somewhere, our journey is completed, or “past.”

General Theme

Are the ten theses merely a loose collection, or are they intended to
support a particular conclusion? Clearly, many of them can be taken to
follow from thesis 5, about the relativity of sameness and
difference. Thesis 5 can thus be treated as a premise or guiding
principle of the set and might be the main theme. Another possibility
is that the set is intended to culminate in thesis 10, the only one
with moral import, which is not relativistic. It states that heaven
and earth—all of the natural world—form a monistic
“one body,” and so our moral caring should extend to all
things. The question of the overall significance of the set in effect
boils down to the question of whether, given the overall context,
thesis 10 has a privileged status over thesis 5 and the others. From
Hu Shih (1922) on, many interpreters have suggested it
does.[14]
Clearly, the textual evidence is so sparse that there is no question
of deciding the issue conclusively. However, there are at least three
good reasons for favoring the monistic interpretation. First, the
placement of thesis 10 at the end makes it natural to read it as the
conclusion or main theme. Second, not only is thesis 10 placed last,
it is the only thesis with ethical significance. A plausible
explanation is that whoever arranged the ten theses saw the ethical
view as emerging out of the others. Third, and most important, unlike
theses 1 and 5, thesis 10 seems to make an absolutist claim. If it were
parallel to theses 1 and 5, we might expect it to present a
perspectival claim, such as that heaven and earth are in one respect
one body and in another respect many. But instead it simply asserts
that they are one.

The relations of sameness and difference that underlie all use of
language can be redrawn in indefinitely many ways, all of which may be
justified relative to one standard or another.

So no single way of drawing distinctions is fixed by nature
itself.

Hence the world in itself draws no distinctions at
all. Distinctions are established by human convention, in which we
establish norms for distinguishing the same and different one way or
another. Apart from these norms, there are no absolute, privileged
natural kinds or distinctions.

Therefore, in itself, all of nature forms a single whole. (And as
parts of this whole, we should care for all things.)

Several comments about this view are in order. First, the thrust of
the view is not that distinctions are “unreal,” in the
sense of being illusory, false, or merely an aspect of appearance, not
underlying reality. It is just the opposite: countless different
schemes of distinctions are all real, with the result that
none are privileged. Since no scheme is privileged, the
“neutral” or “default” view—that of the
world in itself—is monistic, drawing no distinctions at all. On
the other hand, another way of understanding “real” is as
meaning “fixed by nature itself.” If we take
“real” this way, we can agree with Hansen (262) that the
Hui Shi position adopts a “non-realist” attitude toward
distinctions: it holds that no single scheme of distinctions is fixed
by the world. However, if the monistic interpretation is correct, then
the Hui Shi position is realist in this sense with respect to
the “one body” or “Great One,” the “null
scheme” consisting of the absence of any distinctions. That
scheme is fixed by nature itself.

Second, the Hui Shi view does not hold that, as Graham proposes,
“Since division leads to contradiction don't divide at
all” (1989: 79). Far from regarding contradictions as a problem,
it welcomes them. It explains them by appeal to constantly shifting
perspectives or standards for distinguishing same and different.

Since Hui Shi's monism might recall that of the Eleatics (cf. Hu 1922,
Graham 1989), it is worth clarifying the similarities and differences
between the two. The similarities are superficial: both develop a form
of absolute monism grounded in reflection about language or thought
and its relation to reality. But the arguments for and consequences of
the two views are fundamentally different. The starting point for
Parmenides's monism is reflection on the concept of
‘being’ or ‘the real’, specifically the claim
that what is real must necessarily be. From this he draws the
conclusion that what is real must be ungenerable, imperishable,
indivisible, and unchanging. Thus, in contrast to the eternal,
unchanging world intelligible through reason, the inconstant, changing
world of everyday perceptual experience is in some sense not
“real.” By contrast, the Hui Shi view starts from a kind
of radical perspectivalism about distinctions. It argues that since no
standard for drawing distinctions has a privileged, absolute status,
the only way to draw distinctions given by reality itself is not to
draw any at all. Reality is not regarded as indivisible and
unchanging, nor is the changing world of sense experience in any sense
“unreal.” Rather, reality is divisible in indefinitely
many ways. All of the resulting distinctions are “real” in
the sense that the features of things on which they are based indeed
exist. The distinctions are not delusory. The problem is that neither
are they privileged or fixed: they can be replaced by alternative
schemes of distinctions. The only privileged scheme is monism, drawing
no distinctions at
all.[15]

Is this move from perspectivalism about distinctions to a kind of
monism justified? Hansen argues that it is not. His interpretation of the
argument is that it moves from the claim that we cannot know what
distinctions are ultimately real to the conclusion that no
distinctions are real (262). The move is via the hidden,
verificationist premise that a distinction exists only if we can know
that it does. Hence Hansen suggests that the Hui Shi view is based on
a form of “verification fallacy,” which confuses what we
can know with what is real (263).

Hansen is probably right to hold that monism does not follow validly
from Hui Shi's premises. All that follows is that no one scheme for
drawing distinctions can be justified absolutely: Justification must
always be contextual. But it seems unlikely that the text commits the
fallacy he describes. The ten theses do not mention epistemic
issues. Certainly there is no explicit skeptical claim that we cannot
know which distinctions are ultimately real. Rather, there is only the
suggestion, in thesis 5, that there may be uncountably many ways of
drawing distinctions, set alongside a series of examples that collapse
conventional distinctions. So, rather than committing a
verificationist fallacy, it may be that the Hui Shi view is simply
inconsistent. On the basis of thesis 5, Hui Shi should hold any scheme
of distinctions may be deemed “admissible” or
“inadmissible,” by reference to some standard or other,
yet no scheme is privileged, including the scheme that
consists in drawing no distinctions at all. Instead, if the monistic
interpretation is correct, he mistakenly takes the “Great
One” or “one body” view to be an exception to this
rule.[16]
The mistake is understandable, since drawing no distinctions at all
might seem to be a way of circumventing the perspectival nature of
distinctions. It is not, however, since strictly speaking it remains
one among other ways of drawing distinctions.

“Under Heaven” lists 21 more paradoxes, which “the
disputers used to respond to Hui Shi without end for their whole
lives.” All lack explanations, making some impenetrably
obscure. For interpretations of a handful of the relatively tractable
ones, along with speculations about a few of the others, see the
following supplementary document:

Despite their obscurity, at least some of the theses attributed to Hui
Shi and a few of the other paradoxes and sophistries collected in
“Under Heaven” probably grow out of legitimate theoretical
issues and are of genuine philosophical interest. By contrast, when we
turn to Gongsun Long, we encounter a disputer who may have been
devoted to sophistry purely for sophistry's sake. We cannot be
sure of this, of course, but what we can say is that Gongsun Long won
fame by advocating a claim that any competent speaker of his language
would have judged obviously false, namely that “a white horse is
not a horse.”

Gongsun Long (c. 320–250 B.C.E.) was a retainer to the Lord of Pingyuan
(d. 252 B.C.E.) in the northern state of Zhao. Anecdotes about him are
found in the Zhuangzi and The Annals of Lü
Buwei, in which he is depicted advising King Hui of Zhao
(r. 298–266 B.C.E.) against war (18.1, 18.7) and in disputation with
Kong Chuan, a descendent of Confucius, at the home of the Lord of
Pingyuan (18.5). He is mentioned in “Under Heaven” as a
leading disputer and in the Han dynasty Records of the Grand
Historian (Book 74) as undertaking disputation about the hard and
white and the same and different. Intriguingly, the Annals
depicts him citing the Mohist principle of “all-inclusive
care” (jian ai) to King Hui. Together with his anti-war
stance, this suggests that he was influenced by and may once have
numbered among the Mohists. The Xunzi does not criticize him
by name but does cite a version of his white horse sophism in a list
of incorrect uses of names (22.3).

In one anecdote, Gongsun Long is shown applying his cleverness to help
rescue a state from attack. Zhao, his state, had formed a treaty with
Qin to assist each other in anything either wished to do. Qin
proceeded to attack Wei, Zhao's neighbor. Zhao wished to rescue Wei,
but Qin sent an envoy to the king of Zhao to complain.

The King of Qin was displeased and sent an envoy to reproach the King
of Zhao, saying, “The treaty says, ‘Whatever Qin wishes to
do, Zhao will assist it; whatever Zhao wishes to do, Qin will assist
it.’ Now Qin wishes to attack Wei, yet Zhao wishes to rescue
it. This is not what we agreed on.” The King of Zhao told the
Lord of Pingyuan about it. The Lord of Pingyuan told Gongsun Long
about it. Gongsun Long said, “We too can dispatch an envoy to
reproach the King of Qin, saying, ‘Zhao wishes to rescue Wei,
but now the King of Qin alone does not assist Zhao. This is not what
we agreed on.’” (The Annals of Lü Buwei,
18.5/457)

Another anecdote is valuable for what it suggests about the nature of
Gongsun Long's disputations. Gongsun Long debates with an opponent,
Kong Chuan, at the residence of the Lord of Pingyuan. With great
cleverness, he argues for the claim that “John Doe has three
ears.” (In Chinese, plurals are unmarked, so the sophist can
assert of any normal two-eared person, such as John Doe, that he
“has ear(s),” and also that he has a left ear and a right
ear. Therefore he has “three ears.”) Eventually, Kong
Chuan is unable to reply.

The next day, Kong Chuan came to court. The Lord of Pingyuan said to
him, “Yesterday, Gongsun Long's speech was extremely
incisive.” Kong Chuan said, “That's so. He was nearly able
to make John Doe have three ears. Although he could do so, it's a
difficult claim to accept. May I ask a question of you, your Lordship?
Claiming that John Doe has three ears is extremely difficult and in
reality is wrong. Claiming that John Doe has two ears is extremely easy
and in reality is right. I wonder whether your Lordship will follow
what is easy and right, or what is difficult and wrong?”
(Annals, 18.5/457)

Gongsun Long's disputation is perceived as plainly not fitting
“reality” (shi, also the “stuff”
spoken of). It is an exercise in cleverness, a kind of trick
performance in which the disputer attempts to make a case for a claim
that everyone knows does not fit its object. Harbsmeier has rightly
emphasized this point in arguing that further attention to Gongsun
Long's social and historical context is needed if we are to understand
the white horse sophism properly (1998: 300–301). He suggests that
Gongsun Long probably belonged to a class of entertainers at Chinese
courts who performed various skills or tricks. His was to prove, over
any and all objections, that a white horse is not a horse. Hence it's
likely that his sophistries were intended primarily as a kind of light
entertainment, not as expressions of a principled philosophical
position. They touch on philosophical issues, such as discriminating
the same and different, but there is no reason to expect them to
demonstrate cogent reasoning based on a coherent semantic or logical
theory. The truth may be just the opposite: They were probably
intended to be whimsical and amusing, even comical. The “White
Horse” dialogue may be a record of the sort of arguments Gongsun
Long would offer in his performances.

The Han History lists Gongsun Long as the author of fourteen
scrolls of writings. The extant text called Gongsun Longzi
comprises only five short dialogues and an introduction, which is
obviously of relatively late date. A. C. Graham has argued
persuasively that three of the dialogues are not Warring States texts,
but much later forgeries pieced together partly from misunderstood
bits of the Mohist Dialectics. Probably only the
“White Horse,” the essay “Pointing at Things,”
and a bit of another dialogue are genuine pre-Han
texts.[17]
We will look at the first of these below (the second is treated in a
supplement at the end of this section).

The Gongsun Longzi has inspired a vast exegetical literature
in both Chinese and European languages. In the case of the
“White Horse” dialogue, the text is generally clear
enough. (“Pointing at Things,” on the other hand, appears
to be intentionally obscure.) The scholarly controversy concerns what
theory and implicit premises to ascribe to the writer so that the
arguments come out as cogent defenses of a reasonable position. As
Graham says, the interpretive obstacle is “the difficulty of
finding an angle of approach from which the arguments will make
sense.…The arguments are clear, yet the first seems an obvious
non sequitur…and the rest seem to assume an elementary
confusion of identity and class membership” (1989:
82). Introducing his own interpretation, he says, “No one has
yet proposed a reading of the dialogue as a consecutive demonstration
which does not turn it into an improbable medley of gross fallacies
and logical subtleties” (1990: 193). Building on Harbsmeier's
insight that the historical context of Gongsun Long's disputations has
been insufficiently appreciated, we should suspect that these remarks
signal interpretive charity gone too far. Given what information we
have about Gongsun Long—Harbsmeier's considerations, the general
reputation of the disputers for flippant wordplay, the denunciation of
Gongsun Long in the “Under Heaven” essay, and most
important, the fact that his contemporaries took his most famous claim
to be patently false—we should expect these texts to be
a “medley of gross fallacies and logical subtleties,”
roughly a Chinese analogue to the subtle, fallacious, and deeply
amusing arguments of Lewis Carroll.

None of this means that interpreting “White Horse” is
pointless. We can learn about the serious practice of disputation by
studying what is in effect a spoof of disputation, just as an
anthropologist can learn about a culture by studying its humor. But we
should not expect the Gongsun Longzi to present rigorous
arguments or defend well-developed theses of philosophical
substance. In this case, interpretive charity directs us not to look
for true claims supported by sound reasoning, but for whimsical claims
defended by bewildering, even madcap arguments.

The “White Horse Discourse” has spawned nearly as many
interpretations as there are interpreters. One early, influential
interpretation took its theme to be denying the identity of the
universals ‘horse’ and ‘white horse’ (Fung
1958, Cheng 1983). There is now a fairly broad consensus, at least
among European and American scholars, that the text is unlikely to
concern universals, since no ancient Chinese philosopher held a
realist doctrine of universals. Other interpretations have taken it to
deal with kind and identity relations (Cikoski 1975, Harbsmeier 1998),
part-whole relations (Hansen 1983, Graham 1989), how the extensions of
phrases vary from those of their constituent terms (Hansen 1992), and
even the use/mention distinction (Thompson 1995).

A satisfactory interpretation must fit into the discursive context
established by the Mohists, Xunzi, and The Annals of Lü
Buwei, cohere with the concerns we identified in discussing
the background
(Section 1)
and main themes
(Section 2)
of the disputers' inquiries, and take into account what other early
texts tell us about Gongsun Long. Since we know he was an intellectual
prankster, we cannot assume the texts will present cogent arguments
for a well-reasoned philosophical position. If we find them presenting
plainly intelligible but specious arguments, we should take these at
face value, rather than seek esoteric explanations. Given the context
of pre-Han thought, we should expect the text to toy with the problem
of distinguishing “same” from “different,”
potentially touching on identity, part-whole, and kind relations. And
given the disputers' association with the theme of “hard and
white,” we should expect that the text might attempt to treat
inseparable features of things as if they were separable parts. A
number of interpretations have the potential to meet these
requirements, including interpretations involving part-whole
relations, scope ambiguity, kind relations, and identity relations. To
decide between them, then, we need to look at the details of the
text. “White Horse” contains five arguments for its thesis
that “White horse is not horse.” We may find that some
interpretive approaches work better for some of the five, some for
others.

One further anecdote about Gongsun Long—found in two texts from
later eras, the introductory chapter of the Gongsun Longzi
and the Kong Congzi—provides useful context for the
dialogue. In response to a request from Kong Chuan that he abandon his
thesis that a white horse is not a horse, Gongsun Long defends it by
claiming that Confucius himself accepted the same thesis. He cites a
version of a story also found in the The Annals of Lü
Buwei (1.4), in which the King of Chu loses his bow.

The King's attendants asked to look for it, but the King said,
“Stop. The King of Chu lost a bow. A Chu person will find
it. Why bother to look for it?” Confucius heard of it and said:
“The King of Chu is kind and right but hasn't yet reached
the ultimate. He should simply have said, ‘A person lost a bow,
a person will find it,’ that's all. Why must it be
‘Chu’?” In this way, Confucius took Chu people to be
different from what's called “people.” Now to approve of
Confucius's taking Chu people to be different from what's called
“people” but disapprove of my taking white horse to be
different from what's called “horse” is
contradictory. (Gongsun Longzi, Book
1)[18]

In one version of the story, Kong Chuan replies that when Confucius
omits the ‘Chu’, he is broadening the scope of the
referent, not claiming that Chu people are not people.

Whenever we say “person,” we refer to persons in general,
just as whenever we say “horse,” we refer to horses in
general. ‘Chu’ by itself is the state; ‘white’
by itself is the color. Wishing to broaden the referent of
‘person’, it's appropriate to omit the ‘Chu’;
wishing to fix the name of the color, it's not appropriate to omit the
‘white’. (Kong Congzi, Book 11; cf. Graham 1989:
84)

As Harbsmeier points out (302), since this story appears in the
introduction to the Gongsun Longzi, it suggests that the
book's ancient editors themselves took the theme to be how the scope
of the extension of a noun such as ‘person’ or
‘horse’ varies when modified by an adjective such as
‘Chu’ or ‘white’. The main theme is unlikely
to be part-whole relations, since it is extremely unlikely that the
noun phrase ‘Chu person’ was construed as referring to a
whole comprising two parts, the state of Chu and a person.

This preparatory discussion in hand, let's look at the arguments in
the “White Horse Discourse.” The text consists of a series
of exchanges between a sophist and an objector, who defends the
commonsense view that white horses are horses. For brevity, we will
translate and discuss only the sophist's arguments, not the
objector's. To capture the flavor of the Chinese, we will render
certain phrases in pidgin English, omitting articles and plurals. So
we will translate the main thesis as “White horse is not
horse,” variously interpretable as “a white horse is not a
horse,” “white horses are not horses,” “a
white horse is not an exemplar of the kind horse,” or
“the kind white horse is not identical with the kind
horse.”[19]

Argument 1. ‘Horse’ is that by which
we name the shape. ‘White’ is that by which we name the
color. Naming the color is not naming the shape. So white horse is not
horse.

At first glance, it is not at all clear how the premises are expected
to support the conclusion. Here we should recall that the argument is
probably intended to be perplexing and open to various
interpretations, the better to confuse and mystify the audience. With
this caveat in mind, one plausible reading is that ‘white
horse’ names both the color and the shape of white horses, not
only the shape. So ‘white horse’ names something different
from what ‘horse’ names. Hence white horse, the extension
of ‘white horse’, is not the same as (identical to) horse,
the extension of ‘horse’.

This argument can also be understood as “separating hard and
white,” in that the shape and color of white horses, which are
in fact inseparable, are treated as two separate things. If we grant
the sophist that naming the color isn't naming the shape, we
have already allowed him to separate shape from color. Referring to
the color is of course different from referring to the shape. But
naming the object with the color is just naming the object with the
shape. Hence we should reject the third premise and insist that naming
the color is naming the
shape.[20]

Argument 2. If someone seeks a horse, then
it's admissible to deliver a brown or a black horse. If someone seeks
a white horse, then it's inadmissible to deliver a brown or a black
horse. Suppose white horse were indeed horse. In that case, what the
person seeks in those two cases would be one and the same. What he
seeks being one and the same is the white one not being different from
horse. If what he seeks is not different, then how is it that the
brown or black horse are in the one case admissible and in the other
inadmissible? Admissible and inadmissible, that they contradict each
other is clear. So brown and black horses are one and the same in
being able to answer to “having horse” but not to
“having white horse.” This confirms that white horse is
not horse.

This argument is fairly clearly not about part-whole relations, nor
about separating hard from white. The sophist plainly construes
“white horse is horse” as “white horse is identical
to horse.” In Chinese as in English, the sentence ‘White
horses are horses’ can be interpreted as predicating
‘horse’ of white horses, making the true claim that the
things picked out by ‘white horse’ are all among those
picked out by ‘horse’, or it can be interpreted as
expressing an identity, making the false claim that exactly the same
things are picked out by ‘white horse’ as by
‘horse’. The argument trades on this ambiguity. Because we
know that modifying a noun narrows the scope of its extension, when we
hear “white horses are horses,” we naturally apply the
principle of charity, assume the speaker is not saying something
obviously false, and take the relation in question to be predication,
not identity. But the sophist insists on interpreting the sentence as
an identity. Notice that the sophist implicitly applies a principle
roughly like Leibniz's law of indiscernibility of identicals. He
assumes that if two things are identical, they will share all their
features, and one can be substituted for the other in any
context. Since what can be “delivered” in answer to a
request for “white horse” is different from what can be
“delivered” for “horse,” white horse is not
horse.[21]

Argument 3. Horses indeed have color; thus
there are white horses. Supposing horses had no color, and there were
simply horses and that's all, how could we pick out the white horses?
So white is not horse. White horse is horse combined with white. Is
horse combined with white the same as
horse?[22]
So I say: White horse is not horse.

“White” is not “horse” because
‘horse’ alone doesn't pick out the white ones; only
‘white’ does. The sophist takes it as obvious that
“horse” combined with “white” is not simply
“horse.” Here he is “separating hard and
white,” in that he explicitly treats “white” and
“horse” (that is, the shape of the animal) as two things
that are combined to form something more than, and different from, a
horse. The argument again turns on construing “White horse is
horse” as the claim that the kind white horse is
identical to the kind horse.

Argument 4. “Since you take having white
horse to be having horse, we can say having horse is having brown
horse, is that admissible?” “Not admissible.”
“Taking having horse to be different from having brown horse,
this is taking brown horse to be different from horse. Taking brown
horse to be different from horse, this is taking brown horse to be not
horse. Taking brown horse to be not horse while taking white horse to
be having horse, this is flying things entering a pond, inner and
outer coffins in different places. These are the most contradictory
sayings and confused expressions in the world.”

Here again the entire argument is based on construing
“White/brown horse is horse” as an identity claim. Recall
that in early Chinese thought the same/different relation may refer to
either identity or kind relations. Moreover, in classical Chinese,
both types of relations are expressed in the same syntactic form, the
Chinese analogue of ‘A is (not) B’. So
when the context is unambiguous, it is perfectly legitimate to express
the fact that A is different from B by saying
“A is not B.” Taking advantage of this
grammatical feature, the sophist can move legitimately from the
uncontroversial claim that having a horse is different from (that is,
not identical to) having a brown horse to the intermediate claim that
brown horse is different from (not identical to) horse and then not so
legitimately to the conclusion that brown horse is not horse. The
conclusion indeed follows, but only if we allow the sophist to
construe “is not” as “is not identical to.”
Notice that this argument seems to involve neither part-whole
relations nor separating hard from white (that is, shape from
color). Analogy plays a central role, however, as the argument is
based on the analogy between brown and white horses.

The rhetorical flourish at the end of the argument is typical of
Warring States disputation. To emphasize that a claim is inconsistent
or contradictory, disputers would habitually cite contradictory or
impossible things as analogies (Leslie 1964).

Argument 5. “White” does not fix
what is white.… As to “white horse,” saying it
fixes what is white. What fixes what is white is not
white. “Horse” selects or excludes none of the colors, so
brown or black horses can all answer. “White horse”
selects some color and excludes others; brown and black horses are all
excluded on the basis of color, and so only white horse alone can
answer. Excluding none is not excluding some. Therefore white horse is
not horse.

The sophist first “separates hard and white,” establishing
that the shape “horse” is not the same thing as the color
“white.” The color alone does not specify the location
that is white; saying “white horse” does. Therefore horse,
the shape, is not white, the color. Indeed, horse specifies no color
at all. White horse, on the other hand, does specify a color. So again
the sophist has shown that white horse and horse have distinct
features. Thus white horse is not (identical to) horse.

To sum up, the most natural way to read the text is as repeatedly
equivocating between a statement of identity and one that predicates a
more general term of the objects denoted by a less general term. The
sophist refuses to distinguish the true statement that “[the
kind] white horse is not [identical to the kind] horse” from the
false “white horse is not [of the kind] horse.” The
natural way to interpret “White horse is horse” is as the
latter, but the sophist insists on interpreting it as the former. In a
few places, the sophist distinguishes the shape of the horse from the
color in a way that probably corresponds to “separating hard and
white.”

A related explanation of the sophist's view is that he confuses terms
that refer at different levels of generality, or, equivalently, simply
refuses to recognize that terms can refer at different levels of
generality. Xunzi, whose career largely overlapped with Gongsun
Long's, introduced the concept of a “common name”
(gong ming), or general term, which may refer to things at
different levels of generality (22.2f). Xunzi pointed out that
sometimes we refer to things by a single name, such as
‘horse’, and sometimes, to communicate more precisely, we
use a “compound ” name (what we would think of as a noun
phrase), such as ‘white horse’. Provided one of these two
kinds of names is more general, we can use both without their
interfering with each other. This is roughly the same point Kong Chuan
made in insisting that ‘horse’ always refers to all horses
and that adding ‘white’ to it merely narrows its reference
by specifying the horses' color. In each case, the animals
denoted by ‘horse’ are still horses. “White
Horse” deliberately ignores this point.

Hansen (1983, 1992) has proposed an interesting account of the
philosophical significance of the “White Horse”
dialogue. The simplest early Chinese model of the language-world
relation was “one name, one thing,” according to which all
names refer at the same level of generality. Given the Chinese concern
with “correcting names,” so that communication can proceed
effectively and language can guide action reliably, a natural view
would be that ideally each name or phrase should consistently denote
one and only one sort of thing. But as the Mohists noticed, when names
are joined to form phrases, their reference may shift in unexpected
ways. In Chinese, the phrases ‘oxen-and-horses’ (niu
ma) and ‘white horse’ (bai ma) appear to
have the same syntax. But in compounds of the first type, the
extension of the component nouns remains exactly the same as when the
nouns are used singly: the extension of ‘oxen-and-horses’
is simply the sum of the extensions of ‘oxen’ and
‘horses’. In compounds of the second type—the
“as hard to white” type—on the other hand, the
extension of the component words changes. The extension of
‘white horse’ is the intersection, not the sum, of white
things and horses. The extension of the words ‘white’ and
‘horse’ as used in the compound is thus different from
what it is when they are used alone. This raises a serious problem for
the one-name-one-thing view. The Mohists discovered the problem and
took steps toward a solution. Xunzi finally solved it by explicitly
rejecting the one-name-one-thing principle and recognizing that terms
refer at different levels of generality. The approach implied by
“White Horse,” Hansen suggests, would address the problem
by retaining the one-name-one-thing principle and reforming our
language use, so that all names pick out exactly the same portion of
reality in all contexts, whether used singly or compounded into
phrases. Since the extension of names changes when they are combined
to form compounds of the “as hard to white” type, a
proponent of this view must insist that the objects denoted by such
compounds be treated as distinct from the objects denoted by either of
their constituent names: white horses are neither white nor horse, but
a distinct sort of thing. This “solution” is absurd, of
course. But moving beyond the one-name-one-thing model and explaining
exactly why this is absurd was a legitimate philosophical
puzzle at the
time.[23]

The other complete, genuine essay attributed to Gongsun Long is the
near-impenetrable “Discourse on Pointing at Things.” For a
discussion of this text, see the supplementary document:

Among Warring States texts, only two show any familiarity with the
details of Hui Shi's and Gongsun Long's theses. (The “Under
Heaven” book of the Zhuangzi, the major source for our
discussion of Hui Shi, dates probably from the first few decades of
the Han dynasty.) One is the Xunzi, which as we saw ascribes
a list of seven paradoxes to Hui Shi and Deng Xi, as well as alluding
elsewhere (22.3) to the white horse sophism. The other is the famous
“Discourse on Equalizing Things,” Book 2 of the
Zhuangzi, though the text does not attribute the theses to
Hui Shi or Gongsun Long by name. “Equalizing Things” is
critical of the disputers' ideas and in one passage explicitly
criticizes Hui
Shi.[24]
But it also praises his intelligence and is not downright hostile
toward him, as Xunzi is.

“Equalizing Things” alludes to versions of at least four
of Hui Shi's theses and to both the white horse and the pointing
sophisms. “Today go to Yue and arrive yesterday” is cited
as an analogy for something impossible or contradictory. “Just
as it is alive, it is dying” is used for rhetorical effect to
support the point that judgments of what is “this”
(shi) and “not this” (fei) arise
together, are relative to each other, and can be reversed or
shifted. After arguing that anything can be deemed “this”
or “not this,” the text critiques Gongsun Long:

Using the pointed out to show that to point out is not to point it out
is not as good as using what is not pointed out to show that to point
out is not to point it out. Using a horse to show that a horse is not
a horse is not as good as using what is not a horse to show that a
horse is not a horse. Heaven and earth are one pointed-out, the myriad
things are one horse. (cf. Graham 1981: 53)

Instead of using a white horse as an example to show that it's
possible to treat some horses as not of the kind horse, it
would be simpler and clearer to use something of another kind, such as
an ox, and show that some horses can be treated as “the
same” as that thing and different from other horses. For
instance, draft horses could be deemed “the same” as oxen,
forming a kind draft animals, and distinguished as different
from riding horses. For that matter, anything and everything can be
summed into a whole and deemed a single “pointed-out” or
“horse.” The text's point is to trivialize Gongsun Long's
theses. For some purpose or other, by some standard or other, white
horse can indeed be considered of a different kind from horse. But in
light of the pragmatic stance adopted by “Equalizing
Things,” there is nothing puzzling or remarkable about
this.

These allusions place “Equalizing Things” firmly within
the intellectual milieu of the disputers. Indeed, the text argues
explicitly for a view closely related to one of their signature
themes—“deeming so the not-so, admissible the
inadmissible.”

Admissible? Admissible. Inadmissible? Inadmissible. A dao
(way) is formed by walking it, things are made so by calling them
so. Why so? By being so. Why not so? By being not so. Things
inherently have what is so; things inherently have what is
admissible. No thing is not so; no thing is not
admissible. (cf. Graham 1981: 53)

Still, the text's stance is fundamentally critical of Hui Shi and
Gongsun Long. In a trenchant critique, the writer mocks several Hui
Shi-style theses, including spatial and temporal paradoxes and a
version of the “one body” view:

“In the world, nothing is bigger than the tip of an autumn hair,
yet Mount Tai is small; nothing outlives a dead child, yet Pengzu [the
Chinese Methulesah] died young. Heaven and earth were born together
with me, and the myriad things and I are one.”

Having already become one, can you still say anything? Having already
called it “one,” can you succeed in not saying
anything? One and the saying make two; two and the one make
three. Going on from here, even an expert calculator can't get to the
end of it, much less an ordinary person! So in moving from nothing to
something, we arrive at three; how much worse in moving from something
to something! Better not to move any particular way at all, but simply
adapt what we deem shi (right) to the particular
situation. (cf. Graham 1981: 56)

The text questions the coherence of the “everything is
one” view. To treat the myriad things and oneself as
“one” is already to distinguish them from nothing, on the
one hand, and from what is not one, on the other. Indeed, the
proponent of the “one body” view cannot even state his
position consistently. Merely to say that everything is
“one” is to recognize something else besides the one,
namely our statement pointing it out. The one and the name we give it
or what we say about it already make two. And as soon as we notice
that we've got two, we've already got three—the one, what
we said about it, and the “two” comprising the one and
what we said. The playful mockery has an underlying point. The
“all is one” view is not more “real” or more
justified than other schemes of distinctions, and it is useless as a
solution to the problem of what scheme of distinctions to adopt in
guiding life and action. It yields no normative guidance—not
even Hui Shi's “comprehensively care for all things.”
Instead of attempting to find the “absolute” or
“real” scheme of action-guiding distinctions, our energy
would be better spent simply by guiding and justifying our actions
contextually, responding to the needs of each particular situation as
it arises.

Like Hui Shi, then, the writer of “Equalizing Things”
agrees that distinctions can be drawn in indefinitely many ways. It is
also true that if no distinctions are drawn, things in themselves
“connect into one.” Yet focusing one's attention either on
establishing some particular scheme of distinctions or on the
“one” shows an equal lack of
insight. Disputation—whether in defense of Confucian ritual,
Mohist inclusive care, the Great One, or sophistical
paradoxes—is beside the point. Issues addressed in disputation
cannot and need not be settled in order to live well. In fact, they
may even interfere with the conduct of a good life. When we perform
activities at which we genuinely excel—those whose performance
engenders the deeply satisfying experience of feeling fully at home in
the world—what guides us is not knowledge of fixed, explicit
standards of shi/fei, nor identification with the
“one.” It is a combination of skill and a kind of
uncodifiable knack for adapting to the particular situation.

So in deeming things “this” (shi), whether you
bring up a stalk or a pillar, a hag or a beauty, the odd or bizarre,
Dao (the Way) connects them as one.…Only one who has
arrived knows to connect things as one. Deeming things
“this” he does not use; instead he accommodates things in
the ordinary. He adapts his “this” to the situation,
that's all. Adapting and not knowing it is so is called
“Dao.” (cf. Graham 53)

By contrast, wearing out one's wits consciously deeming things one, as
Hui Shi does, instead of simply seeing and making use of the
innumerable ways they can be taken to be the “same,” is
like forcefully affirming that seven equals four plus three without
also allowing that it equals three plus four (cf. Graham 54). It is a
way of grasping part of the right view, but darkly, without
insight.

As for Hui Shi, “Equalizing Things” concludes, “His
know-how almost reached the pinnacle, so his reputation carried on
until later years. It was only in that he was good at it [disputation]
that he was different from other people. Because he was good at it, he
desired to clarify it. It was not the sort of thing that can be
clarified, yet he tried to clarify it. Thus he spent his whole life in
the obscurity of hard and
white.”[25]